


From Ash and Dust

by CaptainConfused



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 12:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainConfused/pseuds/CaptainConfused
Summary: A gift fic for tumblr user savagepiss, whose heart was ripped out by Pacific Rim Uprising and deserves nothing less than a canon Newt/Hermann kiss.This is a post-film beginning-of-a-satisfying-resolution so THERE WILL BE PACIFIC RIM UPRISING SPOILERS.Newt's brainwashing isn't irreparable, and Hermann is going to be right there with him as he sorts himself out. Kind of "established relationship," kind of "we've loved each other for like fifteen years, but we've never talked about it and, well, time to deal with that."Potential trigger warning for a character having depressive/potentially suicidal thoughts; Newt's coming out of a rough place.Also, I know Charlie Day has announced with great enthusiasm that Newt and Hermann have sex, but you can pry Ace!Hermann and probably-also-ace!Newt out of my cold, dead hands. (I know asexuals can be in happy, sexual relationships, but I desperately love the Newt/Hermann dynamic as committed-and-affectionate-but-nonsexual.) There's one subtle mention of Hermann being ace in the text, but mostly it's not the focus. (If the representation's not overt enough, let me know, and I can pull the tag.)





	From Ash and Dust

I.

_you failed_  
_you failed_  
_you failed  
_ _you failed_

 

_you're nothing_  
_nothing_  
_nothing  
_ _nothing_

 

_crush them_  
_kill them  
_ _destroy them_

 

A blurred expanse of light and smudged not-quite-cream. A ceiling. Clicks and soft beeps and the rustle of papers. The persistent and almost-comforting smell of disinfectant.

Hospital.

The inside of his skull felt hot and itchy—and he was—he was—

_you failed_

_try again_

He needed his glasses. He needed the—the datapad. The humans had deployed their giant robots ( _again,_ like _idiots_ ), and he needed to get up, to _try again._

He lifted a hand—or tried to. The movement of his arm was arrested, thin bands biting into the fabric around his... his wrists.

Restraints.

“I have been informed by the PPDC medical staff that something like this happens to Jaeger pilots who Drift both frequently and at great length.”

He—he knew that voice. Clipped. Professional. Obnoxiously British.

_the scientist—the other scientist_

Hermann. Hermann—with a voice far softer and calmer than Newt had expected.

“These... over-stimulated pilots pick up and integrate their copilot's habits or memories or thought patterns. Given enough time out of the drivesuit, the pilot's brain slowly filters out the influence of the copilot, and the pilot's brain is able to return to something of a status quo.”

_hurt him_

_hurt him_

_hurt--_

No, this was... this was Hermann.

You're a good man—his hands around Hermann's neck crushing crushing crushing—I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—Hermann's thumb running against his white-knuckled fingers, a steady and soothing press—no attempt at all to fight back or to hurt or to break his hold.

“The concern with you, Newton, is Ghost-Drifting, which Dr. Caitlin Lightcap historically described as a muted link remaining between pilots even after the drivesuit hardware has been disconnected.”

He tried to twist his wrists, but the restraints held tight. His legs, too, were bound at the ankles. His head ached. The lights were too bright, the hospital machinery beeping too loud, the cloth at his wrists too coarse. He wanted to retch, and he grit his teeth against the churning of his stomach.

“Unfortunately, you've been hooking yourself up to an alien brain segment, which gives us no applicable data to work from.”

_hurt him_

_hurt him_

_hurt him_

no.

He fought the restraints. The bonds dug into his wrists but didn't break, and he curled his hands into fists so tight his fingernails dug into his palms—eight sharp, white-hot slivers of pain.

_hurt him_

No.

A hand closed over his—heavy and cold. Hermann's circulation was shit, as always. Hence the coat, hence the sweaters, hence the endless fighting over the lab's thermostat that Newt had once teasingly referred to as the Cold War.

But Newt's hand relaxed anyway, and with none of his usual awkward hesitancy, Hermann threaded their fingers together and held him so, and as Newt's warring thoughts pulled him back under, the last sensation he had was of Hermann brushing his thumb along the curve of Newt's knuckles, steady and soothing and calm, so calm.

 

II.

The next time he woke, he felt like something was digging its claws into the inside of his skull. His throat was raw and sore, as if he'd been screaming, and Newt had the uncomfortable thought that maybe he'd been awake for a while.

No one spoke, this time, as he twisted his wrists against the restraints. He was alone.

_no one's coming_

_no one wants to_

Newt drew in a breath so deep it hurt. Even if all he would have been able to see was the ceiling, he kept his eyes closed anyway. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to wake up and not be in a hospital. He wanted to be out of the small, rattling cage of his own brain.

Against the backdrop of his never-ending headache, he didn't register at once that the tap and scuff wasn't some new, horrible symptom. They were footsteps—footsteps that hooked at some distant part of his memories and oh, he should slow down, really slow down, change the beat of his steps so that Hermann could keep up.

Sure enough, upon opening his eyes, he could see only ceiling tiles and the blurred square of fluorescent light. He blinked, ill and unsettled, and listened as the tap-and-scuff grew louder and louder and then paused outside the closed door. A bell chimed – the deactivation of some security feature, no doubt – and then the thump of a cane against the tiled floor and the scuff of Hermann's shoes as he limped into the room proper.

Newt said nothing, and Hermann said nothing, but Hermann touched his arm and leaned over him, close enough to be in focus: his eyes sunken and careworn but still sharp, the wrinkles across his forehead and mouth carved in deeper lines than Newt remembered. His shirt was buttoned, as always, right up to the collar, and Newt, as always, felt half-asphyxiated just looking at it.

He tugged at the restraints again—not to hurt this time, just to touch—and gave up and drank him in instead. I'm sorry, he wanted to say again, but the words suck in his throat.

Too soon, far too soon, Hermann rocked out of focus and lifted his hand from Newt's arm. A click, a button pressed, and the bed whirred beneath him, tilted him up into a sitting position. His view changed, the out-of-focus ceiling replaced with an out-of-focus hospital room, but he could see, too, the blurred shape of Hermann ponderously settling himself into a chair beside the bed.

 _hurt him_ came again, but distantly, and he didn't want to, so desperately didn't want to. He didn't want to hurt Hermann.

“They're not _in_ your brain.” Clipped and calm again – a professor at Oxford settling in for a lecture he'd repeated a hundred times before. “Not _physically_. They scrambled your thoughts into a nightmare on the CAT scans, but the medical staff do not think the damage is permanent. You need time and you need rehabilitation. Time and rehabilitation.”

Time and rehabilitation. He could imagine Hermann's expression even if he couldn't see it: stern and closed-off and disapproving. _Idiot_ , his expression would say. _You absolute wreck of a human being, don't you ever think?_

All this work, all this wasted effort, all because he was a _failure and too weak far too weak. not strong enough not good enough not smart enough._

“Newton.”

Newt didn't look up, didn't want to be seen by someone he couldn't see in return. Didn't want to be tipped again into the overwhelming hell of _he doesn't want you here he doesn't need you here._

“Newt.” A hand on his, curling over his closed fingers. “I was... horrified. That Nate wouldn't bring you in alive. I thought they were going to... to kill you.”

“They should have.”

His voice was a rasp, unfamiliar even to him, and unfamiliar, too, was the sudden in-drawn breath from Hermann. But it was true – they should have killed him. He was a monster and a nuisance and _none of them want you here you fool you failure you should have died on the rooftop_

Before he could apologize again, apologize for not dying, Hermann rocked onto his feet without his cane. As Newt reflexively reached out to balance him—and realized in a sudden flash of panic that his arms were still tied down—arms looped around his neck, and the full weight of his old lab partner crashed into his chest.

“No.” Hermann's answer was soft and low, more breath than word, whispered with a hitch a centimeter from Newt's ear. His hand brushed once and again through Newt's hair, smoothing it down or at least attempting to. “No,” he said again, still as a whisper. “No, Newt, you're wrong about that.”

 

 

III.

Hermann, being insufferably British, had procured tea somewhere. He had also (despite the open disapproval of Newt's white-haired nurse) unlocked Newt's wrist restraints and handed him a Styrofoam cup of his own.

Newt could not remember ever liking tea, but if he was being honest, this probably didn't meet the minimum requirements to be considered real tea. He stared down at the cup cradled in his hands, at its thin, murky contents and the slip of string and paper hanging over the rim, and tried not to wretch at the thought of drinking it.

How long had he been here? His thoughts kept scrambling, kept circling around a wound that wouldn't close. He woke in the middle of the night with a fever and the memory of bones and skulls and an alien language he'd never learned the words of. For the first time, the itch on the inside of his brain was one he couldn't scratch. He couldn't go home, he couldn't go to Alice, and he couldn't do anything except drown in thoughts that might have been his or might have been the Precursors'.

Before unlocking his wrists, Hermann had set Newt's glasses very carefully on the bridge of his nose, and Newt kept fighting the urge to take them back off. The short-sleeved hospital shirt left his arms bare and he hated, suddenly, to see the tattoos curling up past his elbows. The Kaiju were embedded in his skin and they were embedded, too, in his brain.

“I'm sorry.”

Beside him, Hermann paused in his scribbling, pen lofted above a battered yellow notepad. Newt risked a sideways glance at him, but Hermann didn't look up.

“You're a good man, Newton.” The pen touched the paper again, but Hermann made no move to resume writing. “I know that. You should remember it, too. You're a good man.”

But he _wasn't_ a good man. He'd been curious and hungry and desperate, and the cost for being sated had nearly been Earth and everyone on it. He might be a danger still. He _was_ a danger still, as long as his thoughts kept curving back to the rooftop and how _close_ he'd been and how _proud_ he'd been. His crowning scientific achievement had nearly been the extinction of his own species.

Hermann tapped his pen against Newt's wrist, and Newt flicked his gaze up from where it had resettled onto his tattoos. Hermann watched him with a gaze quiet and serious and shrewd.

“I am not the least surprised to hear you kept a Kaiju brain in your home, Newton, but it escapes me as to why you spent the last ten years voluntarily Drifting with it.”

_Reckless. Stupid. Ill-conceived._

“Why did you do it?”

How could he explain why? What wouldn't sound, in hindsight, like a shallow excuse meant to paper over a huge, irreparable mistake? And how could he explain to, of all people, Hermann?

Ever since he'd been old enough to put “1+1=2” on paper, his brain had been an endless scramble of gears and wheels and scattered thoughts there-and-gone before he could catch them and pin them down. He was a mess of thinking too fast and talking too fast and running running running with no chance to catch his breath.

And then he'd linked his brain up with Hermann's—and he'd never felt so still. Hermann's thoughts were clear and crisp and sharp—and they had settled around Newt's mess of a brain, and suddenly every loose gear and aimlessly spinning wheel clicked at last into place. Hermann hadn't pushed—and neither, for that matter, had Newt—but their minds made space and made adjustments and reoriented themselves to each other, and there had suddenly, amazingly, been _peace_. Newt could see in his mind's eye the mathematical precision with which Hermann thought and Newt had borrowed it, had known it, had known exactly what he needed to do and how to do it.

And stronger even than that had been the sense of being bigger than himself. Of seeing and being seen—of understanding and being understood—and of that understanding given unconditionally. This was the tangled ball of string that was Newt and _this_ was the rigidly programmed calculator that was Hermann and _this this this_ was both of them together seeing each other and accepting each other and working together in a synchronicity Newt had never known was achievable, let alone something _he_ could have with another person.

And then they'd stumbled out of the Drift and saved the world, and he and Hermann hadn't talked about Drifting. As if by unspoken agreement—an agreement Newt hadn't meant to agree to—they'd settled back into their usual routine: Hermann heckling him about the creeping tide of his notes and diagrams, Hermann stuffy and apoplectic when he was teased, Hermann going rigid whenever Newt happened to brush against his shoulder or his arm.

Going back to business as usual had left Newt empty and hollow in a way he'd not expected. He'd gone his whole life without belonging anywhere, and he'd been used to that, really, the feeling of not fitting. But now that he'd felt that sense of _rightness_ , of being _exactly_ where he was supposed to be, of being with someone who _saw_ him and _understood_ him and _still wanted to be around him,_ he couldn't stand losing that. He couldn't stand the gradual slip back into feeling so disconnected.

But “I don't know,” he said instead, and flinched to see Hermann's mouth tilt into a steeper frown, as if he knew the lie for what it was. “I'm sorry. I don't know.”

 

IV.

Hermann's living quarters were as tidy as his lab. A digital feed scrolled the most recent news across the mirror in the foyer, every book had been slotted into place on their respective bookshelves, and the kitchen gleamed as clean and sterile as an operating table.

The only thing out of place was _him_ , rumpled and tired and probably reeking of disinfectant, and a couch in the apartment's tiny living room with clean sheets tucked around the cushions and a pillow propped against one arm.

“What if I try to kill you in your sleep?” he asked, stuffing his hands deeper in the pockets of Hermann's borrowed coat.

“If memory serves,” Hermann began, struggling out of his shoes, “I dealt with three armed men in an elevator while you struggled to incapacitate one. I think I'll manage.”

“Mine had a gun.”

“I believe they _all_ had guns.”

Newt hunched his shoulders up to his ears. “What if I do try, though?” he asked again. “Just _what if_ , okay?”

Hermann, now in his socks (tasteless argyle socks), rested both hands on his cane and regarded his new house-guest with a frown Newt found more pained than annoyed. “Shall I lock my bedroom door?” he asked, and where the question should have been sarcastic, it was instead genuine, and that somehow made it harder to hear.

“Yeah. Yeah, you'd better.”

\---

He didn't sleep. The invasive thoughts were worse when he slept, and what if he fell into them too deeply to crawl back out? What if he woke to his hands around Hermann's neck? To the scream of alarms announcing an apocalypse he'd set in motion? To the numbing realization that his hands weren't his own and his mind wasn't his own and that whatever scrap of awareness he had in that moment was about to be scratched out, maybe permanently?

So he didn't sleep. He stared—brain on fire, stomach a twisted string of anxiety—at the ceiling. Hermann's ceiling.

“Even if you weren't in need of constant supervision,” Hermann had said, helping him out of the hospital bed, “ _and_ even if your apartment was not right now swimming in red tape because you have in your possession an _illegal alien specimen_ , I would not want you going home by yourself.”

He could sleep tomorrow, when Hermann was at work and the apartment was safely empty. _If_ Hermann went to work. What if he _didn't_ go? Was it not enough that Newt had wrecked himself in pursuit of science? What if he stole Hermann away from it, too, by being too much of a liability to be left unsupervised? Hermann should be spending his hours being the world's most brilliant mathematician, not playing host and nurse to the near-killer of the human race.

A creak, a brief pooling of light as a door opened onto the living room. The door closed again, but on this side of it, now, Newt could hear footsteps soft and sliding, the tap of a cane muffled by carpet.

Newt sat up, turned to see the hunched shadow of Hermann limping into the kitchen.

The shadow paused. “Oh,” Hermann began, as softly as if he thought Newt still asleep. “I'm sorry, I didn't--”

“Dude, don't sweat it.” With forced levity, Newt managed a shrug that was probably invisible in the darkness. “I was already awake.”

“Tea?”

“No, I'm good.”

Hermann flicked on the kitchen light and propped his cane against the oven. He lit a burner beneath his tea kettle and reached for tea and cup, both easily within arm's reach. _He's done this before_ , Newt realized—and remembered the confession he'd not attended to before: “ _I still have nightmares_ , _”_ and the unasked question that followed: _Do you have them, too?_

Hermann leaned against the counter, waiting for the water to boil in patient silence, and so Newt dragged himself upright and padded barefoot into the kitchen. As much as he wanted to put his arms around Hermann from behind and push his face against the back of his shoulder, he knew too well that Hermann seldom wanted contact that invasive, would not want anything that toed the boundary between tame and heated. So he settled on the tile in front of the oven and leaned his shoulder, light and careful, against the man's good leg. After a moment, Hermann reached down and rested his hand on Newt's head, brushed his fingers slowly and thoughtlessly through his disordered hair.

“You know, you did a pretty good job of saving the world without me.” In the silence of the kitchen, his voice sounded too loud, too strained. “I think that settles it.”

“Settles what, Newton?”

“You're smarter than me. And braver than me. And stronger than me.”

“Hmm.” Non-committal. The mildest disagreement he'd ever gotten from Hermann. But his fingers were still toying with the messy ends of Newt's hair, so Newt closed his eyes and exhaled one long, steadying breath.

“I missed it. That's why I did it. That's why I Drifted with... with the Kaiju.” He wouldn't call her Alice, couldn't humanize what had been a portal to something so all-consuming and dangerous. “And I thought I could learn more about them that way. I didn't think about what might go wrong.”

“Groupie.” Even in Hermann's mouth, the barb sounded flat.

“No, it wasn't-- it wasn't that. ” Newt turned his face towards Hermann's knee. “I didn't miss Drifting with _them_. I missed Drifting with _you_.”

Hermann didn't say anything to that, but neither did he move away. And he kept his hand still in Newt's hair, as if the easy affection came naturally to him and he didn't feel the slightest inclination to stop. So Newt waited, sick and silent, as the kettle whistled and Hermann prepared his cup of tea.

Then, at last, Hermann's hand withdrew and he stepped away from Newt's prolonged contact, but even then, the break was only temporary as Hermann lowered himself carefully down onto the floor beside Newt. Realizing he meant to sit, Newt caught his elbow when it came within reach and took part of his weight until Hermann was properly seated beside him, his good leg tucked under him and his injured one stretched long and straight along the tile.

“So,” he began, composed even in his pajamas, even sitting on the floor, “you missed Drifting with me.”

“Yeah.” Hermann leaned sideways just enough to push his shoulder against Newt's, so Newt went on, the words unspooling in his chest as fast as he could say them: “But it was never something you wanted to talk about. The Drifting, I mean. It was like it hadn't happened. And after a while, everything kind of went back to the way it had been. And as good as Drifting had been with-- with you, it... it was gone. It didn't carry past the actual-- the actual apocalypse. Or, you know, the first one.”

“So you went to your abominable alien brain segment for another dose.”

“Yeah.” And gradually, gradually, the feedback had worsened imperceptibly. _they don't need you they don't want you_ had contorted, somewhere, into _he doesn't need you he doesn't want you_ and that, more than anything else, had pulled him out of shape and dragged him under.

“Newton.” Hermann's gaze flicked from his cup of steeping tea to Newt's bloodshot eyes. “If there's anything I took away from Drifting with you, it's that we can understand each other very... very well. But I've only been in your mind once. From here on out, the only way we can communicate is by _talking_ to each other, old-fashioned and crude though that may be.”

“Okay.” Newt swallowed, wished, briefly, for Hermann's coat again, for something to hide in. “Then... I love you. And I tried to kill you.” Hermann was setting down his cup of tea, but Newt had started talking and he couldn't stop: “And all of this—really, like, _all_ of this—is more than I deserve, and you could be dead right now because of me, _everyone_ could be dead right now because of me, and I should be dead, honestly, it would be so much _easier_ if I was dead, and you--”

“Stop.” Hermann's palms warm against his face, his gaze warm and steady and impossibly patient. “Newt. Stop.”

“But it's true.”

“No. The _Precursors_ tried to kill me. _You_ held them back. You're a good man.”

 _I'm not_ Newt wanted to protest, but Hermann was already kissing him, the press of him as warm and reassuring as his voice had been, and Newt couldn't do anything but lean into him and twist his fingers into the front of Hermann's shirt and melt into the hands skating back up into his hair.

 _This_ was what he wanted to drown in, but Hermann pulled away far too soon and guided Newt's head down just enough to leave a kiss against his forehead. “A good man,” he insisted again, and the words lodged in Newt's chest like a second heart. _A good man. A good man._

“Kisses and hugs in public. When did you stop being such a-- such a stick-in-the-mud about all this stuff?” he whispered, and twisted his fingers all the more tightly into Hermann's shirt. Hermann could break the kiss, but Newt really didn't want to let him go.

“When I didn't see you for ten years.”

“You missed me.”

“Yes, you twat, I missed you.” Another kiss feathered against his temple. “And I love you, too. I'm desperately sorry you thought I didn't.”

“Well. I've-- I've missed you, too. Just a little.”

A cough of a laugh. “I gathered that,” Hermann replied, some of the usual sarcasm laced back into his voice, and Newt didn't have to open his eyes to know that Hermann was smiling. “You just told me you Drifted with what was left of a Kaiju brain in order to feel like you belonged somewhere—I'd call that a _bit_ of a clue.”

And then Hermann tilted Newt's chin up with a thumb against his jaw and guided him into another kiss, this one as soft as the first, and Newt fell into it at once, into the settling, settling peace of a heartbeat against his fingertips and Hermann so close and so warm against him.

 


End file.
